Blood Ink

Dr. Diane

The tattoo had never spoken to her before. It took Martina a moment to recognize its voice. At first she thought it was her own inner monologue, with all its biting criticisms and abrupt reproaches. It wasn't; this voice was more insistent, more commanding, than her own voice could ever be.

Go into the closet, it commanded her. Don't let anyone see you.

Who would see me?, she thought. The tattoo didn't answer. Martina walked from her desk to her closet and parted the clothes on the rack. She stood inside the closet for a few seconds, feeling foolish.

Shut the door, the tattoo said. 

This is stupid, Martina thought, and moved to leave. The tattoo twisted between her shoulderblades; sharp pain bolted up her spine. She shut the door. After a few seconds, the pain subsided into a dull throb. A few drops of blood ran down her back.

Martina stood there in the slatted darkness, waiting for something, anything, to happen. She couldn't feel the tattoo now; all she felt was the throbbing ache of where it had been. A few droplets of blood ran down her back; she wanted to itch them, but didn't dare.

 Martina heard her father walk down the hallway. Please don't come in, she thought. Not now. This will ruin everything. Things had been tense between them ever since the hospital visit; the school wouldn't let Martina go back until she had a clean bill of mental health. Words like psychosis and mania floated in the air around her; she heard her father, on the phone with someone, talking about "showing the school a treatment plan."

At first, her father had accepted this. Martina had never seen a psychiatrist, even after her mother died; maybe, he said to her, this would do them both some good. Then the first psychiatrist canceled Martina's appointment, citing a family emergency. The second one wasn't accepting new patients right now. Dad called every psychiatrist, psychologist, social worker, counselor and head shrinker in their insurance network, leaving message after message. Nobody else had called him back.

Martina wasn't particularly upset, or surprised. The world conspired with the tattoo to prevent the latter's exposure. Even when Lisa Rosenstein burst into her bathroom stall while Martina was changing, she still hadn't seen the tattoo blooming across Martina's forearm. Even after a teacher had seen it covering Martina's face, no one had mentioned it – not one person. Martina half-believed that everyone already knew about the tattoo, and didn't care. Of course no one had called them back; why would they? There was nothing they could do for her.

Her father didn't take this quite so well. He had taken a few days off of work; he'd enlisted her aunt to come stay with them for awhile. But as the week dragged on, and her aunt returned to her own children, the two of them reached an impasse. What would he do when the next week came, and she still couldn't go to school? What would happen to her when he had to go back to work? Martina avoided him, and his anxious eyes, as much as she could.

Martina put these thoughts out of her mind. What do you want me to do in here? she thought, directing her thoughts to the tattoo. She could feel it shifting and flowing across her back. It was making a thick, twisting line; maybe a dragon, or a dark snake, or a rope. It didn't answer her.

Martina shook her head at her own stupidity. Why would this thing, after so many years of silence, suddenly grow talkative? It was ludicrous. She flung open the closet doors with one swift jerk of her arms. The tattoo exploded, sending itself out across her body. Martina doubled over in pain. 

When Martina came back to herself, blood had soaked through her shirt and her pants, and was pooling  on the floor beneath her. She held out her arms, to look at them in the light.